Recent Articles

“California officials have floated the idea of legislating lower prices. One way would be to throw West Los Angeles and Orange County into the same risk pools. That might reduce premiums in West L.A., but only by increasing premiums in Orange County. With a few simplifying assumptions, premiums in both West L.A. and the O.C. could rise by 19 percent. An alternative would be to cap premium increases. One state official proposes a cap of 8 percent. But that would just be an implicit form of government rationing. If insurers cannot charge premiums that cover their costs, they will cover fewer services.”

“U.S. health care suffers from three major problems: millions of people go without insurance, health care costs are rising at unaffordable rates, and the quality of care is not what it should be. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) primarily addresses the first — and easiest — of these problems by expanding coverage to a substantial number of the uninsured. Solutions to the other two remain aspirations and promises.”

“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) could create a new divide between consumers who have high-end dental coverage and consumers who have bare-bones dental coverage, or no dental coverage at all. The National Association of Dental Plans has published data supporting that possibility in a summary of results from a recent survey of 3,044 consumers.”

“The Medicare Shared Savings Program, created under the Affordable Care Act, will reward participating accountable care organizations that succeed in lowering health care costs while improving performance… We used a simulation model to analyze the effects of the Shared Savings Program quality measures and performance targets on Medicare costs in a simulated population of patients ages 65–75 with type 2 diabetes. We found that a ten-percentage-point improvement in performance on diabetes quality measures would reduce Medicare costs only by up to about 1 percent. After the costs of performance improvement, such as additional tests or visits, are accounted for, the savings would decrease or become cost increases.”

“Yes, we are facing a fiscal cliff, but we are also facing an entitlements cliff and, thanks to ObamaCare, a health care cliff. Those three cliffs aren’t separate; they’re intertwined. Go over one and we will be pulled over the other two.”

“Republicans on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee threatened to issue subpoenas if the IRS doesn’t turn over more records about how it’s implementing the law’s insurance subsidies. Republicans believe the IRS is planning to hand out billions of dollars in subsidies that aren’t authorized by the healthcare law.”

“To recruit more doctors to treat the poor, President Barack Obama’s health law took a simple approach: temporarily pay doctors more money… But implementing the raise is not so simple… With two months to go, doctors, state officials, and Medicaid managed care plans say there are numerous details still to be worked out.”

“November 16th is the deadline for states to submit a blueprint to the federal government for Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — a key component of the new healthcare law. Already, the exchange system is proving to be an unmitigated disaster.”

“In the time of Caesar, all roads led to Rome. In the time of ObamaCare, seemingly every path heads straight for a cliff.
The health law is filled with cliffs where the returns for more work take a nose-dive.”

“President Obama is campaigning hard on his promise to give women access to free oral contraceptives and surgical sterilization, benefits that are guaranteed under ObamaCare. But women should also know about all of the health services they stand to lose. ObamaCare empowers a host of new boards and committees to arbitrate over what insurance will pay for, and what remains uncovered. They’ll rule over not just health plans sold inside the ObamaCare exchanges, but even private insurance.”